Winter Song

by Colin Harvey

"I'm…" Karl paused, working out how to explain it. "My conglomerate – clan, that is – uses Terraforming to an extent. But it's expensive, and takes constant, ah, working on to stop the world reverting to its default state. That's what happened to the people who founded Isheimur. They went bankrupt in the Long Night, and their assets were sold off. No one would take on this project. I'm sorry."

  Ragnar looked oddly satisfied at the news that the colony had been abandoned. "We'll have to work out what to do with you."

  Karl wondered how his family were, how he could send a signal. He wished that Ship had had the time to download more than basic information – he had no idea how much this world had devolved. The silence of the colony couldn't be taken as a sign that they'd lost all tech, especially as Ship's records hadn't even shown that Isheimur had survived.

  But was he simply wishing for a happy ending? The Galaxy was vast: it was easy to forget that when crossing from fold-point to fold-point, squeezing a journey of years at sub-light into weeks between each star-system's nexus.

  Any signals from Isheimur were probably being transmitted to what was now empty space; current nexi would be unknown to the Isheimuri, while those stations at nexi utilised by Isheimur's Formers were probably now disused.

  A knock interrupted Karl's thoughts.

  Ragnar, who had silently watching Karl called, "Come!"

  Bera held out a metre-long stick that was gnarled, but arrow-straight. "It's been used by Olders before," she said. "I found it in the lobby. It might prove useful."

  Ragnar said, "Take it. Go to lunch. Meet the others." He returned to his papers.

  Karl tried not to feel like a fool as he pulled himself into a standing position. When he took his first step he was grateful for the stick, which stopped him falling flat on his face.

  Bera offered him her arm, though Karl saw her hesitate, and wondered why. As he wrapped his left arm around her right, she flinched – only slightly, but he felt it. Has she been told to be friendly to me? Is she scared of me? Because I'm a stranger?

  He also wondered why he was so sensitive to her. He tried not to feel unfaithful to Karla and Lisane in noticing how pretty she was beneath the camouflage of grime and messiness and her squint. He resolved to offer nothing that might reveal any attraction; he would be correct, but cool, and hope that that would work. Hell, for all you know, not making an advance toward her might give offence.

  Karl drew back from the throng milling around in the long, low room, but Bera gripped his arm. The mob was so busy talking, and shoving each other out of the way to place dishes of meat, bread, eggs and pitchers of drink on the table, that for several seconds they didn't notice him.

  Karl watched the women, Ragnar's daughters and daughter-in law bicker. Thorbjorg had changed her dress into something that highlighted a clearly defined waist separating an ample bust and backside, and coloured ribbons now bedecked her hair. Asgerd had done something to her lips that made them look beestung and highlighted her fine cheekbones. Only Hilda remained unchanged. Through the adults a half-dozen children weaved, dancing and flitting like a shoal of minnows, helping the adults or chasing one another depending on their age.

  Asgerd saw Karl and her lips parted in a smile. The others followed her gaze and falling silent, swung round. "Come join us," Asgerd said.

  "Can I help?" Karl chin-cocked the laden table.

  "You can help eat it," Ragnar said. "Some of it is for you, anyway." He gestured to one of the benches that ran the length of either side of the table, and the others burst into conversation, the children chattering and laughing. Hilda sat opposite Karl. "Is Yngi joining us?" Hilda asked Thorbjorg, who had shoved herself into the space next to Hilda. Thorbjorg flushed. Karl thought he caught Hilda's faint smirk.

  "He's butchering a rock-eater. He's going to pickle it."

  One of the children made gagging noises.

  "We may have to eat it, if it's a hard winter," Hilda said. She turned to Karl. "As Ragnar's daughter, I run the household in his absence." Someone tittered. "So I choose the menu," she added.

  Thorbjorg said, "I'm Thorbjorg, Ragnar's daughterin-law." When Karl shook her hand, he felt the faintest pressure on his knuckles from her thumb, and she seemed reluctant to let go. When he met her gaze, she widened her eyes fractionally, and a pink tongue-tip licked her lips.

  "Would you like some lamb?" Bera said, pushing some of the grey chunks onto his plate. "Green sauce," she said, and ladled a few small spoons onto the lamb. "Have some pickled vegetables."

  Karl nodded thanks. For all that his stomach was growling in protest, he took only a few of the various vegetables, but looking across in the sudden silence, saw that he'd taken far more than anyone else. He tried to scrape some onto Bera's plate, but she blocked him. "You have some," he muttered, pointing to her nearempty plate. "I've taken far too much."

  "You need to build your strength up," she said.

  Following the other's example, he ate using the implements, which felt awkward in his hands. He'd spent too long on Ship and grown used to munching on food that he could hold in his hands. The pickled vegetables were tart in his mouth, but enjoyable. So was the green sauce on the lamb, which was slightly greasy but so rich that his mouth didn't feel big enough to hold the flavour.

  "Good?" Bera said, watching him.

  "Very." He shovelled another forkful into his mouth.

  "It should be. It's freshly slaughtered."

  The lamb turned to ash in his mouth, but somehow he managed to keep chewing and swallow. "This is from an animal?"

  He grew vaguely aware that Hilda and Thorbjorg had stopped talking.

  "A small one of the sort that you saw on the hills. You remember?" Bera said.

  Karl didn't answer, but concentrated on the pickled vegetables, trying not to think of eating what had been a living, breathing creature. Did you think that they were pets, or ornaments, fool?

  "And the other day," Bera said. "You remember, you said 'sheep'?"

  "What?" he said. "I've only just awoken."

  Thorbjorg laughed. "Oh, Loki, you're funny."

  Karl thought, Hmm, there's some sort of misunderstanding here.

  Karl watched Ragnar flirt with Asgerd. Her serenity seemed to challenge the Gothi, who paid her far more attention than the others. His vitality clearly attracts women, Karl thought, surprised at this new facet of a man he'd only glimpsed as a grumbling bully.

  "Are you really from the stars?" Thorbjorg said. Without waiting for an answer, she continued, "You must have seen so many things, if you are."

  "Where else would I come from?" Karl said, smiling. He didn't want to give too much away – he didn't know what Ragnar had told them, and didn't want to upset his host by straying from the party line. "Call me Karl."

  "You could be an outlaw," Thorbjorg said, widening her eyes. Her grin showed her teeth and a mouthful of lamb-in-green-sauce that made Karl feel queasy.

  "I'd be a pretty useless outlaw, wouldn't I?" He made himself ignore the thought of flesh, and grin back. Don't give offence. "I'm told I was found stark naked in a snowfield."

  "You could be some sort of Holy Fool," Bera nudged him.

  "What's that?"

  "Like a seer. They have knowledge that only the learned share, but are ignorant of everyday matters."

  "Hmm," Karl said. He was bemused at how much he knew about Isheimur, but the planetary mass didn't help him understand the details of the society; any information Ship had downloaded would be two centuries obsolete.

  For the first time he felt like the alien that he was, and missed Karla and Lisane with a stab of loneliness.

  His face must have shown his desolation. Bera said, "Are you tired, Karl?"

  "A little," Karl said.

  "Here's Yngi," Hilda said, and Karl wondered at the malice in her voice, and the unhappy look that flitted across Thorbjorg's face.

  The man who joined them walked with an odd shuffle. Like the others, hair erupted from his head and face, and even cove
red his forearms and spread down his chest from his throat. But despite being a young adult – Karl estimated he was about twenty – he gazed at Karl with a child's open joy. "Spaceman!"

  Karl couldn't help warming to him, but before he could reply, Ragnar's gruff voice interrupted. "Come sit here, son. Don't pester."

  The newcomer slouched off, still staring over his shoulder at Karl, a huge grin splitting his face.

  "My youngest," Ragnar said. "Yngvar."

  "Hello, Yngvar," Karl called.

  Yngvar blushed, and his head bobbed.

  "Yngi was brain-damaged at birth," Bera whispered. Karl watched Ragnar fuss around the young man, whom he clearly doted on. Yngi seemed fascinated by Karl.

  Despair engulfed Karl. His body-clock, which displayed Avalon date and time on the top left of Karl's peripheral vision, showed that he'd been gone too long already. What was supposed to be a two-week voyage had already over-run even before the attack on Ship. Lisane would be close to term now. He wished that he had agreed to be told the baby's gender, but too late now.

  When the meal was over, Bera and the other women cleared the dishes away while Ragnar sat and stared into space, and Yngi was ushered away, still staring at Karl.

  Bera led Karl, half-walking, half-shuffling out into a squall. Karl was soaked to the skin in moments. "We have a motto," Bera said. "If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes, and it will change. This will pass."

  She was right; by the time they reached the other side of the cobbled square, the twin suns were burning shafts of sunlight through the pink clouds.

  "It never rains for very long," Bera said. "In the open lands the winds are so constant that much of the rain and snow evaporate before it can nourish the ground. No oceans, you see, just lakes like this."

  Karl took a long look at the valley around them.

  Bales of corn stood in clumps in the fields on the far side of the lake. Figures pulled a trailer full of bales down toward them. Bera followed his gaze. "We store them over winter for animal feed." Further along were a few stunted trees lurking on the far side of the lake shore, barely bigger than shrubs. "They yield berries," Bera said. "There are a few farms on the equator that have proper trees, apples and pears and such-like, and a couple even used to have vineyards. But the crops failed, the farmers were driven into paupers' graves."

  "It sounds a harsh world," Karl said. They resumed their stately walk to the barn.

  "It's the only one we have," Bera said.

  "Is it getting colder? You mentioned farms failing…"

  "Some say so," Bera said. "Others that the men were fools to try growing such crops, that they could never have succeeded at growing luxury items. Once they had started, they couldn't just stop. You get just one chance at life. If you're lucky."

  He wanted to ask her whether she'd been lucky, but remembered his decision to keep his distance. "And sheep on the high ground," he said, pointing to where low clouds covered the hills. Then he looked again. "Is that smoke?" He pointed at the smoke.

  "Steam," Bera said. "Isheimur's riddled with volcanoes, hot springs and geysirs. That resemblance to Iceland as it's described in legends is one of the things that attracted the Formers." She added, "There's precious little soil good enough for growing crops, and what there is, is on the south side of the valley, but the grass grows well throughout Skorradalur from spring through the summer – though the winters are too harsh to allow animals to graze outside. Even if they could the snolfurs would rip them apart."

  "Snolfurs?" Karl frowned in puzzlement.

  Bera didn't see, and carried on talking, "Yes. You remember snolfurs. Big." He shook his head, and frowning, she held her free hand a metre off the ground. "Predators. They kill by wounding their victim, which bleeds to death. Snolfurs kill more than they need, but the winter acts as a deep freeze. The carnage if we don't patrol the flocks is awful. That's where most of the men are: out on patrol."

  "I'm surprised you haven't wiped them out."

  "We hunt them, but the meat tastes awful. There's something in it that's toxic to us, though apparently the first generations were able to deal with the poisons. But we've lost that ability." She shrugged. "It's a big world, there are many snolfurs, and lots of places for them to hide."

  Back in the barn, he helped with her task of peeling vegetables, then dozed.

  Later, he awoke to find her standing over him. "Do you feel up to facing them again?"

  "Yes," he said, though he didn't really – he felt drained.

  He pushed himself to his feet, and she helped him back to the farmhouse, which was again filling with family members, including a freckle-faced man with red-gold hair.

  Karl felt Bera tense. "Thorir," she said.

  Thorir turned to face them. "Bera," he said, then looked Karl up and down. "And you are the spaceman."

  Karl struggled not to stare. All the settlers seemed incredibly hairy, especially the males. As well as Ragnar and Yngi, whose faces hid behind unkempt mats of varying thickness, Karl had seen a man almost bald but for a ring of hair semi-circling the back of his head from ear to ear, then running into a facial covering, but for a top lip that Bera had said was shaved. Arnbjorn – Ragnar's son – sported twin strips of hair running from his nose down either side of his mouth to his chin, and twin strips of hair separating shaved cheeks from his ears.

  But Thorir sported the most elaborate arrangement Karl had yet seen: cranial and facial hair alike braided into ten to twenty centimetre-long stiff spikes. From the way that Thorir stroked them, it was obvious that he took great pride in his locks.

  Karl nodded a greeting in return, feeling as if he had wandered into an antique bestiary. Bera led him to the far end of the table, where Ragnar sat, thinking. "Have you a moment to spare, Gothi?" Karl stressed the honorific.

  Ragnar indicated that Karl should sit opposite him. "I was glad to see you at lunch," Ragnar said. "I'm glad that you made the effort tonight, as well. It bodes well for your recovery."

  Karl said, "It was the least I could do, given my graceless reaction to being awoken. I wanted to apologise and thank you again for your hospitality."

  Ragnar said, "That was well said, Karl Allman." Was it his imagination, or did Karl sense faint mockery in Ragnar's tone? "You seem to be mending well."

  "Getting better. I wish it were faster."

  "So do I," Ragnar said. "We have little spare food."

  "I would be on my way as soon as I can, if that would help," Karl said.

  Ragnar's head lifted, as did his eyebrows. "Just like that? No working off your debt?"

  "I meant no offence," Karl said quickly. "If there is work I can do… but you mentioned a drain on your food stocks."

  "I said spare food," Ragnar said. "We can always find food for hands that can work."

  Karl said carefully, "If I can get a message to your capital?"

  "Our what?"

  "Your major centre of population?"

  Ragnar looked bemused. "Why do you want to get to such a place?"

  Oh, Vishnu, Karl thought. Are you really so stupid, or being deliberately obtuse? "To send a signal to my people," he said with exaggerated patience. "I'd like to return home. To my family."

  Ragnar stared at him. "Signal? Are you mad? You think that if we had such technology, we'd live like this?"

  "I – I assumed that this was an isolated outpost."

  "Hah! We don't have capitals. This is a population centre."

  Karl swallowed, swayed and slumped back against the wall behind him.

  SIX

  Bera

  They ate their meal in near-silence. Karl seemed stunned and Ragnar was in a sour mood, so Bera kept quiet. The others also recognised Ragnar's glower, and murmured among themselves.

  When Ragnar left the table – still without speaking – the others brightened.

  "You should show our guest the sauna, Bera," Thorbjorg said with a sly smile.

  Bera felt her face burn. "You know men and women
aren't supposed to sauna together!"

  "I said show him." Thorbjorg was all mock-innocence, but didn't fool Bera for a moment. "Not sit with him. Though if he needs his hand holding…" Thorbjorg raised her eyebrows. "He has very big… hands, hasn't he?"

  You're not thinking about his hands, you bitch, Bera thought.

  "Do you want to use the sauna?" Thorir called to Karl from along the table. "A pipe runs down from a hot spring on the hillside to the far end of the house."

  Bera nudged Karl, and he started, but must have been half-listening, for he said, "It'd be nice to get clean. Thanks."

  "I'm going in there," Thorir said. "I'll show you which stones are the very hot ones, and how to scrape the dirt off and still have your skin."